מלי דה-קאלו Mali De-Kalo

In the video work Let Me See, Mali De-Kalo sheds light on the historical building housing the Neve Schechter Gallery, while bringing it to life. Interspersed repeatedly with images of the building, and with speakers relating what took place or perhaps took place there, is a pair of dancers, waltzing through Neve Schechter’s large hall. The warm musical notes, the entrancing dance and the love apparent between the man and the woman, who are today in their early eighties, form the pulsating heart of the exhibition. It is thanks to them that the historical story of the building is transformed into a human story; they remind us that the narratives explored by De-Kalo, not matter what period they belong to, were all created by individuals.

In the mid-19th century, Franz Lorenz arrived at Valhalla, one of the four colonies established by German Templars in the Holy Land. Lorenz dreamt of establishing a European-style café in the new colony, which imported to the country groundbreaking innovations in the fields of architecture, agriculture and industry. In 1886, Lorenz realized his dream, establishing a building that would continue to grow over the years around an Arab structure with high arches – which is today home to the Schechter Gallery. The café became a bustling cultural center: it hosted costume balls on the holiday of Purim, as well as literary evenings held in Yiddish. S.Y. Agnon mentioned it in his novel Only Yesterday, and Bialik lectured in the building’s main hall. Among other cultural projects, it became home to a silent movie theater, where film projections were accompanied by a live orchestra. The building housing Café Lorenz bore witness to historical events, to two world wars and to changing fashions, and was populated by a variety of figures from different fields. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, the site came under Jewish ownership, eventually becoming a free hostel for IDF soldiers in Tel Aviv. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, numerous weddings were held in the building, and the soldiers’ enjoyed its cafeteria. The site was eventually abandoned, falling into a disheartening state of neglect. In 2010, it was restored by the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

De-Kalo approached this video work from the same point of departure that she developed and refined in her earlier works – the archive: Her work challenges, examines, disassembles and reassembles the archive, creating an alternative artistic narrative that is not subject to institutional laws.

The historical Café Lorenz and the contemporary Neve Schechter have no ordered, uniform, accessible archive. The archival materials explored in this work are the fruit of research conducted by Shai Farkash. The further research conducted by De-Kalo in preparation for the current exhibition is wide-ranging and innovative. As part of her approach, which centers on the idea of multiple narratives, De-Kalo enables the visitors to add their own memories to the “living archive” forming in the course of the exhibition.

De-Kalo interviewed a number of different individuals who have forged some sort of connection with the mythological Café Lorenz, asking them to examine a series of old photographs from the archive and to explain and clarify the depicted scenes. Those interviewed include the historian and historiographer Prof. Yossi Ben-Artzi; the artist and graphic designer David Tartakover; the artist Jennifer Bar Lev; the historian of Tel Aviv Shula Vidrich; Rabbi Roberto Arbiv, the rabbi of the Masorti community in Neve Tsedek. Shai Farkash, who documents and restores wall paintings; the architect Michal Kimmel-Eshkolot; and the sculptor Sophie Jungreis.

The comments made by the interviewees, which are presented as a disrupted conversation, offer a brief glimpse of the past through descriptions of the lush vegetation surrounding the building and the mention of contemporary and historical sounds and events.

Gustav Bauernfeind’s 1888 painting The German Colony in Jaffa, in which he meticulously examines the local vegetation, joins the speakers in De-Kalo’s video work, who describe in detail the plants and trees characteristic of the site, still viewed today as an oasis at the heart of the city.

The video work also includes a discussion of the artworks that were once part of the historical building, yet have mysteriously vanished over time, such as Yohanan Simon’s wall painting End of the War (1949), which extended across an entire wall in the restaurant that was part of the soldiers’ club. The building is also known to have housed wall paintings by Mordechai Gumpel, Perli Pelzig and Avigdor Stematsky. The enigmatic circumstances of their disappearance give rise to a discussion concerning the preservation of cultural and artistic treasures, and Israeli society’s attitude towards them.

The video work Mother casts an honest and unconventional gaze at the convoluted workings of human memory: Mali De-Kalo’s mother, Edna Dekalo, who grew up in Neve Zedek, examines an old photograph of the building, which contradicts the memory stored in her personal archive. This is a rare moment, in which the artist’s voice is heard staging the scene. Turning her camera at her family members is part of De-Kalo’s practice. The dancing couple that marks the passage of time are in fact Leah and Shuki Dekel, the artist’s aunt and uncle, who were married in the army hostel in the 1960s.

The upper floor of the exhibition is devoted to research, and features projections of the silent films once presented at the Magic Cinema in the building. Here viewers are invited to delve into this research project, read historical documents, and add memories to the exhibition website.

Exhibition Curator: Shira Friedman